A few of my cousins played soccer, and while we were growing in Northern California and got together for holidays and other social occasions, I'd be the target of barbs and snide remarks regarding goalkeepers as a breed far inferior to those in the field.

I'm disappointed that MLS has tacked on just one match to the automatic suspension meted out to Red Bulls midfielder Jorge Rojas for deliberately slamming his elbow into Brian Mullan's face in a league match last week.

No quite one-third of the way through the season, yet with a busy summer of international competitions and callups on the horizon, these are a few of the impressions taken of what has transpired so far in MLS:

So virulent is the friction between competing political parties during the past decade or so that "compromise," the process once heralded as vital to the democratic process, is practically an epithet these days.

I loathe announcers, be they soccer or otherwise, whose top-shelf method of conveying excitement or drama or surprise is to loudly wail the latest and lamest buzz-bellow, as in, "ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE!?"